SEARCHING FOR OLIVER K. WOODMAN

That intrepid hitchhiking doll is back—and gone, as his repeat trek from South Carolina to California goes terribly awry, and Tameka enlists the help of Paige Hall, an investigative reporter, to track him down. With the help of Tameka’s Uncle Ray, Paige sets a new wooden figure, Ms. Imogene Poplar, P.I., to tail him. The caper’s format follows very closely in the pattern set in the first outing, featuring letters and postcards sent back and forth between Tameka and Paige, and updates from characters Imogene encounters on the road as she is borne along on Oliver’s trail from Rock Hill to Alaska. (How Oliver ends up in Alaska instead of California is revealed in a sequence that unfolds on the title and copyright pages.) Cepeda’s signature oils-over-acrylic illustrations fairly fizz with energy and good humor, sliding occasional glimpses of Oliver into the backgrounds as Imogene pursues him across the great American landscape. Pattison’s epistolary text does yeomanly work, giving each of Imogene’s helpers a distinctive character and developing a romance subplot between Paige and Uncle Ray. As with its predecessor, understatement and ambiguity are everything; Oliver’s fans will happily embrace both. (Picture book. 5-8)